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In the final lap, a river cleanup plan requires a kick: Editorial Agenda 2016

Updated July 12, 2016 at 3:01 PM;Posted July 12, 2016 at 3:00 PM

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Sandra McDonough, president of the Portland Business Alliance, at a Portland Harbor cleanup session held in December at the Oregon Convention Center. Looking on is Portland Commissioner Nick Fish, who this week underscored the need for the city to marshal support for a cleanup plan to be configured this year by the Environmental Protection Agency.
(Stephanie Yao Long/Staff)

It's an open question whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will, after more than 15 years of study and negotiation, finally configure a cleanup plan this year for the Portland Harbor portion of the Willamette River.

How much that matters is debatable. But the calendar is clear: Only 83 business days remain in the year following Sept. 6, the close of a recently extended public comment period on a proposed cleanup plan released last month. If upon reviewing the public's comments EPA decides substantial revisions in its proposed Superfund cleanup are warranted, it will be impossible to make the self-imposed deadline.

It could matter a great deal to Portland.

The nation will in November elect a new president. He or she will take the reins in early 2017 and possibly change his or her administration, which includes an EPA administrator expected to sign off on Portland's cleanup plan. That's to say nothing of EPA's Northwest region, directly responsible for devising and executing the cleanup plan and whose Seattle-based administrator also could change -- this following churn in recent years in the ranks of project managers.

The city of Portland, meanwhile, has been waiting for the cleanup of a river whose sediments are so sullied from past industrial use that consumption of resident fish is considered a cancer risk. Missing the mark this year would mean irresponsibly kicking the can down the road for an indeterminate amount of time on the correction of a waterway that's vital to Portland's environmental and recreational integrity as well as to Oregon's economy.

Therein lies the rub. A deep divide already evident in public sentiment must in the coming months be closed substantially in EPA's vision of the cleanup.

Portland environment leaders -- Bob Sallinger of the Audubon Society of Portland and Travis Williams of Willamette Riverkeeper among them -- insist that EPA's $746 million proposed plan does far too little to dredge long-life toxics such as PCBs from the river bottom and properly dispose of them. Portland business leaders -- Curtis Robinhold of the Port of Portland and members of the industrial Lower Willamette Group among them -- argue that the proposed cleanup plan looks eerily close in scale to a previously rejected $1.4 billion proposed plan. They wonder how that is possible and challenge the economic assumptions upon which EPA estimates costs, expected to spike as cleanup work proceeds and adapts to in-water conditions that vary across the cleanup zone and by season. The opposing views, all made clear to the editorial board of The Oregonian/OregonLive, underscore the complexity of the project in a dynamic river whose pollution profile and sediment contours differ today from years ago, when a cleanup was declared to be so dire. Waiting years more won't fix it, though.

Oregonian editorials

Editorials reflect the collective opinion of The Oregonian editorial board, which operates independently of the newsroom.

If you have questions about the opinion section, contact Erik Lukens, editorial and commentary editor, at elukens@oregonian.comor 503-221-8142.

Significantly, federal law requires of EPA that any Portland Superfund cleanup enjoy community support. That's as it should be. But more than 100 industries past and present, as well as public entities such as the Port of Portland and the city of Portland, are implicated in the historical pollution and will be on the hook to pay their share for the cleanup. Meanwhile environment and recreation advocates, joined by Northwest tribes that have historically depended upon the river, bring to the table concerns about river health and insist a heavy reliance upon the passage of time, and with it so much river water, cannot offset insufficient dredging.

EPA's decision to extend the public comment period was wise. The numbing complexity of the project challenges any civilian seeking to grasp it. But the extension lights a faster fuse on achieving a final cleanup decision this calendar year, necessary if Portlanders are to believe they will actually see their hallowed river restored.

The final in a series of EPA-sponsored hearings on the proposed Superfund cleanup will be held July 20, from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., at the Ambridge Center in Northeast Portland. A worthy sentiment to be expressed would be that federal regulators, joined by city of Portland officials, show the leadership necessary to bridge the divide among constituents and get a cleanup launched. Portlanders, and the river, deserve nothing less.